Chapter 8

The apartment was quiet, save for the rhythmic metallic clicking of Julian assembling his toolkit.

I sat at the kitchen island, a cup of chamomile tea warming my hands, watching him systematically place his Allen wrenches and screwdrivers into the canvas bag. He was avoiding my eyes. He

Chapter 9

Julian Thorne was not a man who cooked. In the three years we had lived together, our kitchen had served primarily as a staging area for takeout boxes and coffee cups. So, when I unlocked the front door of our apartment to the overwhelming scent of seared steak, garlic, and rosemary, I pa

Chapter 10

The conference room at Vanguard Architecture occupied the forty-second floor of a glass-and-steel monolith in the financial district, a building that Julian had once lost a bid to design. The irony of sitting inside it, looking out over the sprawling city skyline, was not lost on me.

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